Passion Play by Sean Stewart

Author:Sean Stewart [Stewart, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

Six

I woke up aching, and grumpy with the knowledge that I was missing something. Something small, that once perceived would change the course of the investigation. Something insignificant, pointing towards an unseen pattern.

The shrapnel cut was an angry needle threaded across my cheek. I crabbed at Queen E as I made my morning tea and composed my schedule. First, a preliminary set of interviews: the gopher, a couple of extras, Len and Sarah. Then the reading of the will; it would be interesting to see who turned up, and who got the goods.

I wanted to see Mask’s final statement. The complexity of his personality was rapidly increasing, spinning out from the remarks of David Delaney and the stifled reactions of Celia Wu. The method, the victim, the motives. These should be enough. Like God, the murderer’s nature is immanent in his works. Study them enough, and you will come to know their author.

I winced, remembering how I must have seemed to Jim and his friends as I yelled and ran into the night.

My spoon uncoiled slowly as I stirred; crimping my flatware was a bad habit I had picked up from Rolly. Straightening up, reforming: time to get back to work.

The offices of Radcliffe and Brown aimed at an old-fashioned effect of stately legal privilege. From the beige shag carpet to the elegant acrylic portraits of the firm’s founders, the office was appointed with impeccably conservative taste. Those of us there for the reading of the will were arranged around a sleekly oiled walnut table, seated in exquisite walnut chairs which ground expensively into my shoulders. I shifted restlessly, quite aware that tipping my chair back on its hind legs was a decided faux pas.

Predictably we could hear Vachon long before we saw him. “It’s a terrible bore / But try to ignore / the awful decor,” he drawled. Then quietly, “…stay calm, little Argive.”

Celia entered on his arm, shaky but breathtaking in a coppersilk flare fired with glints of gold at the collar and cuffs. Seeing Rolly and me she caught her breath, and her fingers tightened on Vachon’s arm. Small wonder; I looked even meaner than I felt, and Rolly, resplendent in a cinnamon suit and purple paisley tie, was something from her beautician’s Apocalypse.

She couldn’t be surprised to see us. So why the startled, furtive impulse I felt from her, as clearly as a gust of wind on a calm day? “God bless,” she stammered.

Daniel stepped in to cover for her, pulling out a chair between Rolly and Radcliffe. “My, everyone seems so…elect,” he remarked. “I feel like a lion in a den of Daniels.”

With his hard, white brow and handsomely tooled features the elder Mr. Radcliffe might have been chosen by the same decorator who had furnished the rest of the office. His gaze drifted across me and found me wanting. My jacket was mud-stained and my face freshly scarred from last night’s chase. When I first arrived I had made a fuss about keeping strictly off the statutory corder present at such affairs.

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